Home Health Aides: How to Manage the People Who Help You.
Home Health Aides: How to Manage the People Who Help YouHome Health Aides: How to Manage the People Who Help You. Alfred H. DeGraff, author. Saratoga Access Publications, Box 2346, Clifton Park, New York 12065-2346. 352 pages. $18.95, plus $3.00 for postage and handling ($7.00 for postage and handling by air outside of the U.S. and Canada).
A step-by-step handbook reference which extensively teaches people who use home health aides, or personal care attendants (PCA's) how to find, train, manage, and pay these workers while keeping them happy.
For over 20 years, the author has recruited, trained and managed the PCA's whom he has employed. As a spinal cord injured, quadriplegic user of a motorized wheelchair, he has recruited and managed help in a variety of settings that include college campuses, career offices, urban apartments, rural homes, health facilities, and international business and vacation travel.
When this assistance is provided dependably, efficiently and on a consistent schedule, the recipient of help can lead the lifestyle and daily schedule that he or she chooses. The recipient is in control of his life and truly lives independently. In contrast, when assistance is unreliable, of poor quality and provided on a sporadic schedule, the recipient has lost control. In many cases the care provider now controls the recipient's lifestyle and daily schedule, consciously or not.
A recent survey indicates that over 5 million American adults with physical limitations have a temporary or life-long need for assistance from personal care aides. Categories of help can include getting dressed, transferring to a wheelchair, grooming, bathing, toileting, cooking and eating, housecleaning, and transportation.
Yet many service recipients lack the skills to manage the people who provide this help. Several studies have concluded that there is one predominate reason for service recipients to lack control of their own lives: their lack of training in attendant management skills.
Over 85 topics in this new release teach management skills. Topics include reasons PCA's quit or are fired, settings for using help, strategies of a good manager, factors of good work environments, types of needs which do or do not qualify for requesting help, assertive-aggressive-passive ways to request help, making a list of personal needs, creating a job description, sources and methods for recruiting-interviewing-screening, secrets of hiring and training, parting ways by firing and resignation, using agency versus personally recruited help, and 10 guidelines for maximum independent living.
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| Publication: | American Rehabilitation |
|---|---|
| Article Type: | Book Review |
| Date: | Sep 22, 1989 |
| Words: | 403 |
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